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Culinary Tourism

CULINARY TOURISM: “Eating Out Of Curiosity”

—“the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an Other”  (Long, 2004) “Exploring the world through food.” Also known as gastrotourism and food tourism.

The phrase “ culinary tourism ” was coined by folklorist Dr. Lucy Long to explore the meanings, motivations, and implications of seeking food experiences different from our usual ones. She introduced it at scholarly conferences in 1996 and first used it in print in 1998. It was later the title of Long’s edited volume (2004) and has since been adopted internationally by the tourism industry to refer to highlighting food as a tourist destination and attraction. Long has also applied her concepts to food-related programs throughout the world, to educational strategies in museums (particularly the Smithsonian Institution Folklore Festival), and to tourism initiatives. She developed a model for culinary tourism in the Bowling Green Tourism Trail (Ohio) that focuses on introducing tourists to the food culture of the area.

Long’s model of culinary tourism offers ways in which tourism can be used for cultural education and interpretation as well as for economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This “eating out of curiosity” also offers a way of exploring the world. Food opens up new cultures for us. It offers a window into the lives of other people, other times and regions, religions, belief systems, and social classes. Such exploration can be done through cookbooks, cooking shows, grocery stores, family recipes, and everyday meals in our own kitchens as well as through travel, fine dining restaurants, and exotic or gourmet foods. This understanding of culinary tourism also makes us aware of the power food has to carry memories, affirm relationships, construct identity, and encourage artistic self-expression.

Most of us approach new foods with a certain amount of curiosity: will it taste good; will it make us sick; can it really be eaten? But some of us also approach new food as an adventure, as an opportunity to try new experiences. This spirit of adventure characterizes culinary tourism. “Eating out of curiosity” introduces us not only to foods that are new to us, but also to a way of exploring the world. Food opens up new cultures for us. It offers a window into the lives of other people, other times and regions, religions, belief systems, and social classes. And such exploration can be done through cookbooks, cooking shows, grocery stores, family recipes, and everyday meals in our own kitchens as well as through travel, fine dining restaurants, and exotic or gourmet foods.

“Culinary tourism is about food as a subject and medium, destination and vehicle, for tourism. It is about individuals exploring foods new to them as well as using food to explore new cultures and ways of being. It is about groups using food to “sell” their histories and to construct marketable and publicly attractive identities, and it is about individuals satisfying curiosity. Finally, it is about the experiencing of food in a mode that is out of the ordinary, that steps outside the normal routine to notice difference and the power of food to represent and negotiate that difference.” ( Long, 2004)

Culinary Tourism , edited by Lucy M. Long, Univ. Press of Kentucky, 2004.

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Looking at the Foundations of Food Tourism Through ‘Foodways’

Thinking about a region’s “foodways,” or how its food, culture, and history connect, can help destinations tell meaningful, unique stories to travelers.

— Culinary Tourism Alliance

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In an increasingly globalized world, why do we continue to associate tacos with Mexico, risotto with Italy, and wontons with China?

Although we can find these foods in markets and restaurants around the world, many people travel great distances to try these dishes at their source. The history of food and drink is often regional, with dishes innately tied to local history, culture, and the landscape. Tacos, risotto, and wontons are about more than the ingredients that go into them –– they’re a manifestation of regional foodways.

The term “foodways” describes how food, culture, and history connect. Foodways help us better understand how ingredients and dishes relate to the heritage and traditions of a specific area or people. Put simply, foodways are the who, what, where, when, why, and how of food and drink. Understanding foodways allows us to tell meaningful stories about what we eat and drink and why it matters.

For visitors, the stories behind regional dishes are more than just interesting anecdotes. They provide a glimpse into local culture and make eating experiences more meaningful.

A sandwich becomes a lot more interesting to a traveler when he or she finds out that the bread flour came from a 100-year old mill down the street. And a bowl of vindaloo curry in Goa becomes way more satisfying when it’s made during an impromptu cooking class by a traveler at his or her homestay.

Foodways are dynamic. They change in relation to social, economic, and environmental conditions. Italy’s relationship with the tomato is a great example of how foodways build a region’s story. Although originally from South America, tomatoes today are associated with Italian cuisine through dishes like caprese salad and pasta bolognese. When Europeans were first introduced to the tomato, it was considered poisonous, so many people refused to eat them. Over time the tomato became a staple for Italian cooks –– and through multiple waves of emigration, Italy’s tomato-based recipes traveled across the world and were adapted many times over.

It’s also important to consider the evolution of recipes when exploring a region’s foodways. Think of an Indian restaurant in Washington. Perhaps they offer a local blueberry lassi alongside the traditional mango variety. It’s a cultural fusion that reflects the influence of local ingredients on traditional recipes.

Although local food and drink can play a key role in defining the foodways of an area, local sourcing is not essential to food tourism development. Instead, showcasing personal or regional foodways is what’s important.

For travelers with an interest in foodways, food is more than sustenance. It’s a way of understanding a place. Showcasing foodways through storytelling is important for communicating tastes of place to visitors. When a menu explains a restaurant’s family connection to the dishes they offer, it illustrates personal food journeys and makes the visitor experience more meaningful.

Helping communities identify and leverage their foodways is central to our approach at Grow Food Tourism. Foodways can often be so ingrained in everyday life that many people find it difficult to notice the unique food and drink offerings in their community. Berry picking, community suppers, farmers’ markets, and shore lunches all offer the interactive experiences that today’s travelers seek.

Even in our globalized world, there are unique food and drink experiences that can only be enjoyed in specific places. By unearthing your destination’s foodways, you can identify tastes of place that will position it as somewhere with distinct and memorable food tourism experiences.

For more information about how you can use foodways to grow food tourism in your destination, visit growfoodtourism.com .

This content is created in partnership between SkiftX and Culinary Tourism Alliance . If you’d like to see more content like this please subscribe to our Skift Table Newsletter .

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22 Culinary Tourism

Lucy M. Long (Ph.D., Folklore, University of Pennsylvania) runs a nonprofit Center for Food and Culture and teaches food studies at Bowling Green State University in the tourism and American culture studies programs. She is the author of Culinary Tourism: Eating and Otherness (2003) and Regional American Food Culture (2009) and has published on a wide range of topics connected to food, ranging from Appalachian food and music to Irish soda bread to Korean restaurants.

• Published: 21 November 2012
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A product of both world history and contemporary mass culture, culinary tourism is a scholarly field of study that is emerging as an important part of the tourism industry. Also known as gastronomic tourism, tasting tourism, and simply food tourism, culinary tourism refers to adventurous eating, eating out of curiosity, exploring other cultures through food, intentionally participating in the foodways of an Other, and the development of food as a tourist destination and attraction. In culinary tourism, the primary motivation for travel is to experience a specific food. Culinary tourism parallels the globalization of food production and consumption and reflects issues inherent in tourism. It has the potential to address some of the controversial issues in tourism in general, such as questions of authenticity, commodification of tradition, identity construction, intellectual property and intangible heritage, as well as the ecological, economic, and cultural sustainability of food cultures in response to tourism.

Culinary tourism is both a scholarly field of study and a growing trend within the tourism industry. It is defined as adventurous eating, eating out of curiosity, exploring other cultures through food, intentionally participating in the foodways of an “other,” and developing food as tourist destination and attraction. 1 Also referred to as gastronomic tourism, tasting tourism, and simply food tourism, it is seen as tourism in which experiencing a specific food is the primary motivation for travel. 2

This essay offers an overview of these perspectives, using a folkloristic framework for understanding tourist behaviors as a way a balancing the exotic and the familiar. A product of both world history and contemporary mass culture, culinary tourism reflects the globalization of food production and consumption as well as issues surrounding tourism in general. Questions of authenticity, commodification of tradition, identity construction, intellectual property, and intangible heritage, and the ecological, economic, and cultural sustainability of food cultures in response to tourism are hotly debated. In some minds, culinary tourism offers solutions to some of these issues by suggesting a framework for exploring other people’s connections to food, as well as offering strategies to insure cultural, economic, and ecological sustainability. 3

Origins of Culinary Tourism: Eating out of Curiosity

People have always eaten food out of curiosity, both for sustenance and to explore new tastes. Food scholar Fabio Parasecoli quotes sociologist Claude Fischler and psychologist Paul Rozin in describing two conflicting impulses that have propelled the development of new foods and new cuisines: neophilia , “the curiosity to try new food, based in humans’ omnivorous nature,” and neophobia , “the concurrent fear of being poisoned.” 4 Such curiosity has been a driving force in the history of food, introducing new ingredients, recipes, preparation methods, and cooking styles. Culinary tourism suggests the process by which novelty is incorporated into a food culture by the movement from exotic to edible to familiar and finally to palatable. New foods are perceived as strange and different (exotic) and possibly not edible. Once they are perceived as an item that can be eaten (familiar), then evaluations of its tastiness can be made. Chinese food in the United States, for example, was initially seen as too exotic to be considered food when first experienced by California gold rush miners in the mid-1800s. Once Americans got used to the idea of eating it, it became a part of their familiar “culinary universe,” and taste preferences might then determine their choice of consuming it, rather than fear that it was too unknown. Similarly, restaurant owners might then add something exotic in order to stir curiosity again. This may explain the common pattern seen in the United States in which Cantonese-style Chinese restaurants are first accepted, then are followed in some areas by restaurants offering various regional styles of Chinese food. Donna Gabaccia makes cross-ethnic dining central to her interpretation of American food in We Are What We Eat (1998). 5

World historian Felipe Fernández-Armesto suggests a similarly long view of culinary tourism in his book Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (2002). He identifies eight “revolutions,” or paradigmatic shifts in the ways humans use and think about food, including the rise of agriculture and herding, the development of cooking and manners, and long-distance trade and industrialization. These transitions are not successive chronological periods, but tend to overlap, survive in pockets of populations, and leave behind vestiges of each stage. His history suggests that “eating out of curiosity/exploratory eating” has always occurred but in different manners and with different meanings. In the eighth and final phase, the postindustrial, Fernández-Armesto helps to explain the emergence of culinary tourism as an intentional exploration of the “other” for the purpose of pleasure and satisfying curiosity. This phase is characterized by “the internationalization of the palate and the rise of fusion cookery reflect[ing] multiculturalism.” 6

The industrial world offered new mobility to people to cross cultural boundaries—both voluntarily for pleasure, education, or commerce and involuntarily for safety, health, lifestyle, or occupational opportunities. This has literally brought together individuals from different backgrounds to living in close proximity and sharing their everyday lives, including their foodways. We smell our neighbors’ dinner cooking; we see new vegetables in the supermarkets; we visit restaurants serving cuisines completely foreign to us—these all make us curious about things we might not have known even existed before. Geographer David Harvey characterizes the state of the modern world, particularly since the 1950s, as one of “space-time compression.” 7 Food cultures are also compressed in the sense that many of us (particularly in the United States) now have access to ingredients, dishes, cooking styles, and food philosophies from across the world. Although literature and travel writing might have piqued our curiosity before, we can now actually satisfy that curiosity and experience these new foods. This intentional mixing of ingredients and styles has created numerous fusion dishes and even cuisines. Simultaneously, hybrid dishes have emerged from expediency (cost, availability, ease of preparation) that then may become the focus of curiosity. Reactions against industrialization could also encourage culinary experimentation, particularly with foods that were seen as more authentic and natural. The countercultural revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s saw an openness to new cultures and new experiences as well as a celebration of diversity and nonconformity, all of which helped open up peoples’ palates to new tastes. 8

Eating out of curiosity now occurs in a wide variety of forms—commercial and public as well as informal and private. They also include educational explorations into other cultures and places as well as pleasurable excursions into new tastes. Contemporary global culture encourages adventurous eating, and numerous new products featuring “exotic” foods are being marketing in grocery stores and restaurants.

Cookbooks and other culinary literature could perhaps be seen as the first virtual media for culinary tourism, offering readers a window into other people’s food. Although these were originally meant to function as primers for cooking skills and housewifery, they also offered vicarious eating, enabling readers to imagine new tastes. Many cookbooks today include portraits of the culture surrounding the recipes, giving histories, biographies, maps, and luscious photographs that whet the appetite. Cookbooks featuring regional food traditions are particularly popular throughout the United States and Europe. Even though many of these present gourmet updates of traditional recipes or innovative recipes using local ingredients, they also reflect a shift toward looking inward to explore the complexities within a nation, as well as a concern with place as significant to human experience. Food writing moved in the early 1990s from reviewing restaurants to exploring the pleasures of new foods and new cuisines, as well as accounts of travels for and with food. Today, food periodicals frequently feature exotic (or at least, new) foods and ingredients, along with new ways of cooking and serving food. For example, the cover of the January 2007 issue of Food and Wine heralds “100 tastes you must try in 2007.” Even non–food-centered periodicals often include foods or eating experiences based on culinary curiosity. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a major fashion magazine included an article in which the author describes how “after a few wrong turns, [he] finds his way to some of China’s most delicious, authentic, and innovative cuisine—and the perfect roast duck.” 9

New media have also been primary venues for satisfying one’s curiosity about food. Televised cooking shows, like cookery books, opened new culinary worlds for thousands of people who would never be able to travel to experience those foods. Julia Child, though not the first television chef, broke new ground in 1963 with the premier of her program, The French Chef , in which she showed American housewives how to “tame” gourmet French cooking. Cooking shows, though popular, tended to remain the domain of day-time programming for stay-at-home adults (wives, particularly) until the Food Network was established in 1993. This brought new foods and cuisines into the home and helped transform the perception of cooking from a domestic chore into a culinary art. By 2004, cooking shows were wildly popular among all ages and genders, and the Food Network created shows dedicated to exploring new and exotic foods. One of the most popular culinary adventure shows was Anthony Bourdain’s A Cook’s Tour , which aired in 2001 and 2002, and visited locales ranging from Tokyo and Southeast Asia, to Portugal and the Basque region of Spain, Mexico, Kansas City, Brazil, and Australia.

Films, like television, have always included food and eating as part of the setting for action and as metaphors for characters’ emotions and relationships. My Dinner with Andre (1981), for example, consisted entirely of two characters talking over a meal. Films that focused on food preparation and consumption, though, tended to be rare, and even in the 2010, there are a limited number that actually center action and character development around food. Babette’s Feast , (1987), about a woman who cooks for a Danish community of ascetics, has inspired adventuresome home cooks to recreate her nineteenth-century Parisian banquet. Another film that uses eating our of curiosity as a theme is Sideways (2004), an American comedy in which two middle-aged men travel through California’s wine country, exploring possibilities in their own lives as they explore wine and fine dining. Numerous other films have stirred audiences’ curiosity about food and cooking, most notably, Big Night (1996), Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994), and the award winning, Julie and Julia (2009).

Also riding this wave is an emerging genre of literature made up of memoirs and fiction based on exploring food. Memoirs, in particular, have become popular and usually use food as a tangible way to organize and make sense of memories. Often set as an exploration of food in a new place, this exploration is a metaphor for discovery of the self. Some of the most influential ones include, M. F. K. Fisher’s The Gastronomical Me (1989), Peter Mayle’s A Year in Provence (1991), and Ruth Reichl’s Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table (1998) and Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table (2001). Of particular relevance to culinary tourism is Jeffrey Steingarten’s The Man Who Ate Everything (1997), in which the author, food critic for Vogue magazine, sets out to taste and learn about foods that he disliked. Even though he does not acquire a liking for them, he eats them out of curiosity, a sense of adventure, and an exploration of his own culinary universe. More recently, Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (2007) explores a year of living off of locally produced food in the Virginia mountains, tapping into more recent concerns about connecting one’s food to environmental and community sustainability. A similar thread in many of these memoirs is a search for identity, family, and community through food. An excellent example is food scholar and writer Laura Schenone’s The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (2008), in which a desire to learn to make ravioli like her grandmother did takes the author on a culinary tour through Italy—and a discovery of herself.

Restaurants, cooking classes, and folklife festivals also cater to the search for new culinary pleasures. Eating out in the United States has become much more common today, not just for special occasions but also for nourishment, and is a major source of entertainment. As palates become more cosmopolitan, restaurants offer more and more tastes, oftentimes adding dishes from a variety of culinary cultures to the menus. A brochure for an exclusive restaurant in the Washington, D.C. area, for example, boldly claims: “Tour the world’s finest cuisines, presented with flair and accompanied by premium spirits and wines.” As our tastes have broadened, cooking classes and “tasting” events have become popular. Classes in the United States may still focus on culinary skills drawn from French cooking, but many now focus on learning techniques and styles from cultures across the globe. These often teach iconic dishes (Chinese stir fry, Japanese sushi, Thai noodles) that have become popular through the restaurant scene so that they can be reproduced at home. Since food is a window into culture, eating out of curiosity can also be a way of exploring the culture surrounding a food. Educators, museums, and other cultural institutions and culture scholars have long used food to introduce belief systems, aesthetics, lifestyles, and traditions of other cultures. For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s annual Folklife Festival includes foodways as an integral part of every cultural group presented at the festival. Many people come because they are curious about particular foods, and leave with an understanding that food is a much more complex—and richer—topic than they realized.

Food in the Tourism Industry

The tourism industry was slow to recognize the potential of food as an attraction and destination, treating it instead as one part of “hospitality services.” This is understandable, however, if we define tourism as travel for pleasure, and realize that the hardships and dangers early travelers had to endure rarely made it a pleasurable experience. A number of cultures have traditions of people traveling to places specifically to eat the food produced there. Northern Spain, for example, is famous for the varieties of beans associated with each village, and knowledgeable eaters travel to restaurants in those regions serving specialty dishes made from those beans. Consumers insist that the beans taste differently if transported elsewhere, and that a full appreciation of them requires consuming them in situ, in the place they are grown. Wine, similarly, has attracted consumers who want to sample the wine in its place of origin and production. Such travels can perhaps more accurately be called food pilgrimages since they include an element of seeking the authentic as an almost sacred quest for knowledge and personal transformation. 10

The countries most associated with both domestic and international culinary tourism are France, Italy, and Spain. All have highly developed cuisines, as well as native populations that are knowledgeable and willing to travel within their own countries for food experiences. They also boast historical and contemporary cultures of wine consumption, often tied to strong family traditions of vineyards and vintners. Today, Australia, New Zealand, China, Thailand, and Singapore have become major food destinations. Canada and the United States are also vying for their share of the tourism market. In most cases, wine tourism is leading the way in the tourism industry bringing in tourists usually willing and able to pay for higher-priced hospitality services. This has encouraged the development of fine-dining, gourmet food establishments, and, in some instances, is forming the basis for the emergence of new cuisines—for example, the Niagara region of Canada, Southern Appalachia in the United States, and the New Global Cuisine based in Hong Kong. 11

Individual businesses within the tourism industry are developing products in response to recognizing this interest. Wineries and restaurants, for example, began promoting themselves as tourist destinations, often adding overnight accommodations for guests. In the early 2000s, travel companies began including food as a focus, offering tours to famous restaurants or to eating experiences in regions well known for their food, and in the 2000s, businesses emerged that focused on culinary tours. With names such as Culinary Adventures, The Globetrotting Gourmet, Crete’s Culinary Sanctuaries, and A Cook’s Tour, these companies are obviously focusing on food as a destination. Guidebooks and travel brochures are also emphasizing food. For example, the Lonely Planet—World Food series is specifically “for people who live to eat, drink and travel with local recipes and culinary dictionary.” 12 These include maps, photos, recipes, and cultural and historical context so that readers can explore the food culture knowledgeably and respectfully.

New Zealand, Australia, Great Britain, and Canada have led the way in establishing culinary tourism within the tourism industry, and have tied industry developments with scholarly research and assessment on the subject. Each nation has established its own organizations overseeing culinary tourism. The United States has been slower to recognize food’s potential, and has tended to focus more on the business and management side with less attention to cultural issues. For example, the International Culinary Tourism Association, based in Oregon, focuses on strategies for creating and marketing products and offers expensive certification programs for members. 13

Although tourism initiatives are becoming more aware of the potential for everyday foods to attract visitors, their emphasis is primarily on fine-dining, innovative foods that deliver satisfying taste experiences and justify tourist expenditures. Any food associated with a place, however, can become the focus of culinary tourism, for example, maple syrup in New England, beef in Argentina, lobster in Maine, crawfish in Louisiana, or grits in the Southern United States. Some cities become associated with particular foods—Cincinnati chili, Kansas City or Memphis barbecue, Boston baked beans, Philadelphia cheese steak—and are using those foods in their tourism marketing. Tourists frequently intentionally eat those foods in order to better “experience the place,” and restaurants catering to tourists frequently market the foods in that way. Iconic foods are also featured on tourist souvenirs such as clothing, key chains, and other trinkets.

Culinary tourism is closely related to other varieties of tourism. It can be included under cultural tourism, in which tourists travel to experience another culture. In these instances, food is used as a way to discover everyday life as well as to share a sense of community with members of that culture (or with the tour group). Festivals often offer sites for cultural tourism, presenting specialty dishes intentionally selected to represent a cuisine. Also closely related is agritourism, which consists of farm tours, possibly observing or participating in farm activities, such as milking cows or harvesting a crop, or tours of food processing and manufacturing establishments, such as canneries, cheese making, or factories. For obvious reasons, agritourism tends to focus on rural areas, while culinary tourism is frequently urban with access to restaurants.

Heritage tourism is also relevant to culinary tourism. Living history museums, notably Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia and Plimouth Plantation in Massachusetts, often allow for the exploration of foodways of the past with demonstrations of food preparation. Interpreters may give explanations along with such activities as cutting apples, baking bread, or working in the garden. In some venues, visitors are given the opportunity to participate or to at least taste some of the results. Extreme tourism, in which tourists test boundaries of safety or social and cultural appropriateness, sometimes includes food, involving ingredients not usually considered “normal” or edible in the tourist’s home culture. Ecotourism, in which the focus is on exploring the natural environment without damaging it, can be related to culinary tourism by including meals utilizing locally produced and organic foods. Culinary tourism is also frequently now tied to sustainable tourism, offering a way to keep money in host communities, provide employment to local residents, and teach understanding of the culture among tourists. Later I will discuss the ways it attempts to resolve the twin challenges of tourism: competitiveness and endurance of resources.

Culinary Tourism—Scholarly Literature

Scholarship on the intersection of tourism and food is surprisingly recent, with the late 1990s and early 2000s marking the publication of most foundational studies. Research initially divided into two strands. The first was humanities-based, using qualitative, ethnographic research that explored both food and tourism as socio-cultural constructions. The focus tended to be the meanings and impacts of those constructions. The second strand was an applied one, using social science, business, and marketing models with quantitative methods to clarify and resolve issues surrounding food within the tourism industry. Although these two strands still exist, sometimes in opposition to each other, tourism scholars and individuals working within the industry (particularly outside the United States, notably in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Great Britain) have recently recognized the need to bridge the two. Research on sustainable tourism tends to merge the two approaches.

Geographer Wilbur Zelinsky was perhaps the first scholar to discuss the concept, which he termed “gastronomic tourism.” In a 1985 article, he used a novel quantitative method of surveying telephone book listings of ethnic restaurants to map culinary regions in the United States and Canada. His research was concerned with explaining the prevalence of particular ethnic groups as restaurateurs. 14 Nevertheless, a number of scholars within the humanities picked up on the term and sought to explore the meanings of “eating the other.” 15 For example, a cultural studies dissertation by Jay Ann Cox examined Mexican foods in an Arizona folklife festival as well as the stereotypes presented in salsa advertisements. 16   Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat, by David Bell and Gill Valentine, offers excellent summaries and critiques of various theories and publications. They use the phrase “kitchen table tourism” to refer to the possibilities offered by modern technology (specifically, the Internet) for vicariously experiencing other food cultures. Their chapter on the global explores numerous issues involved in culinary tourism from a cultural geography perspective. 17 Another excellent discussion of these issues is provided by cultural studies scholars Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones, and Ben Taylor in their important food studies text, Food and Cultural Studies . Among other things, they address the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of social distinction as an explanation for the modern trend in acquiring knowledge of the culinary other as cultural capital to assert identity and class difference. They point out that multiple interpretations should be recognized, and that consuming the other is tied to numerous cultural processes. Their delineation of five of those offers a useful model for research: production, regulation, representation, identity, and consumption. 18

Zilenski’s work on restaurants established those institutions as significant sites for food and tourism. Numerous publications touch on this intersection without referring specifically to tourism, and my own formulation of culinary tourism grew out of research on Korean restaurants in the United States. 19 The edited volume by anthropologists David Beriss and David Sutton, The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat , also uses restaurants as the “ideal postmodern institutions” for exploring the many challenges facing us today, including tourism. 20

I first used the term “culinary tourism” in 1996 conference papers at the Association for the Study of Food and Society and the American Folklore Society. The favorable reception by colleagues led to a journal article in 1998, and an edited volume, Culinary Tourism: Eating and Otherness , in which I offered a framework for broadening our understandings of both tourism and food as cultural, social, and personal constructions. My definition of culinary tourism draws from folklore, sociolinguistics, cultural anthropology, and philosophy of aesthetics: “the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an other—participation including the consumption, preparation, and presentation of a food item, cuisine, meal system, or eating style considered to belong to a culinary system not one’s own.” From this perspective, culinary tourism deals with the negotiation of exotic and familiar foods by individuals—tourists as well as producers. Foods have to be different enough to elicit curiosity, but familiar enough to be considered edible. Also, exoticness or “otherness” is a matter of personal perspective involving multiple factors. Culture, ethnicity, region, time (past, future, and festive), ethos or religion, socioeconomic class, gender, and age can all offer foods that are different for an eater. For example, kosher foods might be exotic for non-Jews; alcohol for under-age teenagers; stews cooked in an iron kettle over an open fire for modern day eaters; vegetarian foods for an omnivore; quiche for “real men.”

This approach to otherness expands the possibilities of what foods are available for tourism. I adapt John Urry’s “tourist gaze” 21 as a way of seeing the potential exoticness in common, everyday foods, moving beyond gourmet dishes to recognizing the potential meaningfulness of the everyday—“exoticizing the familiar.” My model for culinary tourism also shifts the focus from food (the product that is consumed) to foodways, the total network of activities surrounding food and eating. This network includes procurement, preservation, preparation, presentation, consumption styles, contexts for eating, cleaning up, conceptualizations about food, and symbolic performances. Individuals attach different meanings to foods partly because they have different memories associated with these components. For example, a fish caught in the local river during a family vacation might be the same product as one shipped in from a commercial distributor, but it carries memories of people and events that give it different emotional weights. The model also suggests that venues for tourism extend beyond the usual sites for consumption of food to include a variety of venues, both virtual and “real”: cookbooks, cookware shops and catalogues, grocery stores, films, literature, television cooking shows, advertising, festivals, farms, classes, and so on. The folkloristic approach to culinary tourism recognizes that aesthetic and sensory memories shape individual’s responses to new experiences, and that individuals constantly reconstruct their perceptions of identity, community, and culture.

Culturally grounded food studies scholars also began addressing culinary tourism in the mid-1990s. The 11th conference on The International Commission for Ethnological Food Research held in Cyprus in 1996 focused on the role of colonization in culinary tourism as well as connections between migrations, immigrations, and the geographic distribution of particular foods and foodways. The proceedings were published in 1998, edited by Irish folklorist Patricia Lysaght, and articles provide historical as well as ethnographic perspectives. A more recent exploration of these issues can be found in a special issue of Food, Culture and Society , titled “Food Journeys: Culinary Travels in Time and Space.” Articles in this volume explore “a wider range of temporal and figurative journeys,” using travel “as a metaphor for reflection, memory, exchange and otherness.” They utilize a critical theory approach recognizing that “accounts of eating practices therefore have an intimate and intricate relationship with colonial discourse, and with differential power relations in general.” 22 In this publication, Kaori O’Connor analyzes food as not only a central tourist attraction but also a metaphor for the tourist identity that has developed around Hawaii, while Daisy Tam uses Bourdieu to develop a theory of Slow Food that actually centers the self as part of a system with responsibility to the rest of that system, a positioning that forces individuals to look outward and that holds the possibility for culinary tourism to enable positive shifts in human’s relationships to others. 23

Meanwhile, scholarship within tourism studies began addressing food as an attraction and destination in the mid-1990s. Scholars in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand defined food tourism as a particular genre of tourism having as its primary motivation “the desire to experience a particular type of food or the produce of a specific region.” 24 This definition was later expanded to include “visitation to primary and secondary food producers, food festivals, restaurants and specific locations for which food tasting and/or experiencing the attribute of specialist food production regions are the primary motivating factor for travel.” 25 Thus, a volume on wine tourism offered a cross-disciplinary perspective drawing from business, social science, and policy approaches. A 2003 work, Food Tourism Around the World , also edited by Hall and Sharples, explored motivations, models, and implications for culinary identity as well as regional economic development. The book offers management and marketing perspectives but also recognize the role of culture as a useful tool for marketing. The authors also focus on location as significant to food tourism, stating that even though it can be “exported” it still retains a spatial fixity: “The tourists must go to the location of production in order to consume the local fare and become food tourists.” 26 This conclusion differs from the humanities approach in which individuals can explore other foods through a variety of venues without actually traveling away from home.

Another influential volume, Tourism and Gastronomy (2002), edited by Anne-Mette Hjalager and Greg Richards, examines gastronomic tourism as a force for economic development and cultural transformation. Authors discuss issues such as the potential for gastronomy and tourism to serve as radical, activist disciplines, the importance of intellectual property, regional and national identities, and the connections between globalization and localization. The editors conclude by pointing out that tourism and gastronomy are both emerging disciplines with similar dichotomies in practice from small-scale, artisanal production to industrial mass production. They also call upon globalization to be interpreted as a potentially beneficial force, noting that fears of it fail to recognize the dynamic character of both gastronomy and tourism. Portugal’s protectionist stance toward globalization has, in their opinion, stifled the local food culture. By contrast, Spain’s ability to develop brand names for regional cuisines not only allows for more creativity but is also more realistic.

In another formative publication, Priscilla Boniface has sought to explain why food and drink have recently become attractions in their own right, placing the question in historical context as well as a contemporary reaction to industrialization, modernity, and globalization. She suggests that this shift represents more than just the discovery of a new niche in tourism. It is a shift in the culture of tourism itself, implying that tourism is no longer based on a separation from the quotidian, but instead a blending between holiday and the everyday. Taking a cultural perspective on “tasting tourism,” Boniface recognizes that culture drives tourism, which in turn provides a medium through which society works out issues of identity and power. Building upon the ideas of cultural critic Henri Lefebvre, who emphasized the disconnection of modern man to his modes of production and even consumption, Boniface sees food tourism as a seeking of authentic experiences through food—resulting from the peculiarities of modern life. Boniface raises the possibility, though, that this very modernity is what makes us recognize and appreciate the past, the rural, and the non-industrialized. Finally, she identifies five “driving forces” acting as motivations for food tourism: anxieties over food safety and social uncertainty; a need to show distinction, affluence and individualism; curiosity and wish for knowledge and discovery; the need to feel grounded amid globalization; and the requirement for sensory and tactile pleasure. Her work is particularly useful for humanities scholars of culinary tourism who are exploring the constructions of the meanings of culinary tourism. 27

The publications mentioned previously emphasize the positive opportunities offered by recognizing food in tourism, but a 2004 article by Erik Cohen and Nir Avieli points out that food can also be an obstacle to tourism. In this useful assessment of the state of food tourism both as an industry and a field of scholarship, they observe that unpleasant food experiences can lead to cultural misunderstandings and that the use of food as an attraction can actually have harmful effects on the host culture. 28 By 2010, scholarship in tourism recognizes culinary tourism not only as a significant industry trend but also as a subject crucial for understanding the implications of tourist productions and behaviors.

Many of the issues surrounding culinary tourism concern tourism in general. Although food presents some unique challenges, it also offers a medium for exploring these issues. Because it is so multifaceted and easily holds a variety of meanings simultaneously, food helps in understanding the complexities of tourism as both a human impulse and an industry building upon that impulse. This section first addresses some of the common criticisms of tourism and then explores the two biggest challenges facing culinary tourism in the future: competitiveness and sustainability.

One of the most fundamental criticisms is that tourism is categorically a colonialist enterprise in which individuals with power and wealth exploit other cultures for their own pleasure, entertainment, or edification. That exploitation means that individual members of other cultures are stripped of their personhood and perceived as less than the tourist. Similarly, tourism puts “others” on display, turning them into an object to be looked upon. This issue in culinary tourism translates into asking what it means to eat an “other,” a food perceived to be exotic or somehow different from one’s own food culture. Eating does not necessarily lead to understanding or respect for that culture. 29 My formulation of culinary tourism as a means of developing an experiential understanding of the humanity of others also addresses this concern. By approaching food, a basic and universal need, as a cultural, social, and personal construction, we can identify our commonalities as well as the logic behind our differences. 30

Philosopher, Lisa Heldke, addresses the colonialist issue in her book, Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (2003). She points out that eating other cuisines poses a philosophical dilemma. On one hand, it represents imperialism in that it is only with wealth that we are able to experiment with food. But, she continues, “for me to decide to eat only foods of my own ethnicity is to close my doors, not to allow any foreign influence in. It is also a decision to impoverish my life by remaining ignorant of other cultures.” Her answer is to continually question ourselves—our motivations, our responses, our attitudes and relationships to that food and the people behind them: “we cannot eat just once and be done with it. The meanings of our actions do not remain constant, but shift and change with the changes in their context.” This consciousness allows us to become “anticolonialist food adventurers.” 31

A recent trend in culinary tourism initiatives may reflect a shift in attitude among tourists that reflects awareness Heldke encourages. Cooking classes and educational culinary tours turn tourists into students of that culture. Although these types of activities tend to be high-priced, and the knowledge these tourists gain might be for their own enhancement “back home,” they are acting in a way that reverses the typical host-tourist relationship. In this case, the host has knowledge and skills that the guests want and respect, and many individuals involved in such tourism feel that it creates a more equitable relationship than the usual tourism one. To describe this particular attitude of respect, even reverence, for the food of an “other,” I have suggested the term “food pilgrimage.” Individuals on food pilgrimages seek original contexts in which to experience a food cultural as authentically as possible. Seeing the food “in situ” offers the opportunity to understand it as a whole system connected to a specific time, place, and people. Such tours can lead to a “transcendent” experience with food, and food “pilgrims” often feel that they have undergone a positive transformation in some way.

Another major criticism of tourism is that it leads to a weakening of cultural identity, that, by putting a culture on display as part of a tourist attraction, that culture becomes a commodity, and identity becomes little more than a brand name. Proponents of tourism, however, point out that individuals frequently become more aware of their identity through tourist activities. Furthermore, if tourists are respectful of that identity and show an appreciation for it, they can actually encourage pride and a desire to preserve identity. Kevin Meethan, for example, states that tourism actually reinforces “locality, or the specificity of places and cultures.” 32 Since foodways are an expression of identity, culinary tourism offers an especially potent means of affirming that identity. George Ritzer’s work on McDonaldization asserts that globalization has often stimulated local cuisine rather than stifled it, and Richard Wilk observes that tourism in Belize has recently encouraged the development of a Belizean cuisine. 33

These positive interpretations of tourism make sense if we think of “differential identity” as identities constructed out of contrast with another identity. The differences between cultures help us identify what characterizes them, and which of those characteristics are significant. Culinary tourism plays a role in this process by emphasizing the unique foodways of a culture. This happens on a variety of levels. Regional identities based on real or imagined attachments to a geographic space can actually be recognized as well as constructed through food. Barbecue has become iconic of the American South, and scholars are now demonstrating that variations in barbecue meats and sauces reflect regional differences within that larger region. 34 Food can also offer a commonality around which individuals can feel a sense of attachment to a place, so that consuming that food becomes a symbolic means of acting upon that attachment. Clambakes in New England often serve that purpose as well as others. 35 Furthermore, food is also being used to develop a definition of a region. A new cuisine is developing in Southern Appalachia, for example, that features local produce and foods from nature—mountain trout, blackberries, morels. In order to appeal to culinary tourists, these foods are sometimes “fancied up” and removed from their cultural histories. Grits, for example, might be referred to as “Appalachia polenta,” or “traditional” foods such as fried green tomatoes and ripened tomato slices are paired with fresh mozzarella and basil leaves. 36

Ethnic identities have also been constructed and affirmed through culinary tourism. Restaurants, festivals, church fairs, and cookbooks all offer venues for culinary tourists to experience these foods. 37 Tourism also allows for ethnic identity to be situational, a highlighting of that identity rather than others also held by the hosts. For example a Middle-Eastern restaurant in Detroit where there is a large population of Lebanese-Americans, might be run by family who has lived in the United States for several generations and intermarried with non-Lebanese, but for purposes of the restaurant, they highlight their Lebanese ancestry. Similarly, since Korean food was slow to be accepted in the United States outside major cities on the east and west coasts, many Koreans highlighted their Asian heritage and opened restaurants serving Chinese or Japanese foods. There are numerous other examples of ethnic foods that were initially exotic tourist items that have become familiar and accepted within mainstream food culture and have perhaps then led to both a recognition of that ethnicity and further exploration of that cuisine—Italian pizza, Mexican tacos, Spanish tapas, Chinese chop suey and chow mein, Thai pad thai, and so on.

The adaption of foods for culinary tourism reflects another frequent criticism of tourism in general, that it manipulates cultural traditions, commodifying and “trinketizing” (turning them into trivial souvenir objects), stripping them of their original meanings and cultural power. Also, as a force in globalization, tourism is correspondingly leading to homogenization of cultural differences. Since many tourists seek familiar foods when they travel, popular restaurant chains have been established throughout the world, in some cases supplanting local food practices and spawning local imitations. Some scholars have challenged the interpretation that this leads to homogeneity. James Watson, for example, has demonstrated that McDonald’s in Asian countries are given culturally specific meanings and functions by local residents. 38

Culinary tourism can actually be a force in encouraging both globalization and the affirmation and preservation of local foods since such tourists actively seek foods different from their familiar ones. Tourists can provide practical incentives for maintaining culinary traditions by creating markets for them. This leads to “tourist cuisines or dishes,” that are either inventions of new dishes or adaptations of traditional ones in order accommodate tourist tastes and expectations. For example, restaurants in southern Appalachia now offer updated versions of traditional foods such as grits and cornbread, using organic or exotic ingredients. Similarly, chefs in Singapore have developed a new fusion cuisine specifically in response to tourists. Emphasis also tends to be on celebratory foods rather than common, everyday ones since these are often considered more distinctive, tastier, and higher priced. This can then dilute the meanings of that food. The luau in Hawaii, for example, has become a tourist production with stereotypical foods, shifting from the sacred meanings held within the community to simply a party and feast for the tourists. 39

The tendency to adapt foods for tourists raises questions about authenticity, a quality felt by some tourism scholars to be a primary motivation for many tourists. 40 Authenticity, however, presupposes that there exists an original, pure version of a food culture that has remained static and free of outside influences. Recognition of the dynamic nature of culture in general has led instead to questions concerning how to define a food culture, how to preserve it without also stifling it, and ownership of it.

Food is now recognized as intangible heritage and, as such, can be protected under international law. UNESCO includes it as part of cultural heritage. Preservation of this heritage, however, is very complex, as seen in the example of a town in Italy, Lucca, which attempted to ban all ethnic foods in restaurants in order to preserve their local specialties. Critics pointed out that the cuisine they were trying to protect had itself been developed from “foreign” foods originally (tomatoes, for example). Also, some local residents protested, saying that they wanted to be able to be innovative and creative in their food preparation and consumption. Again, the role of tourism was seen in this discussion as both an affirmation of the food heritage and a threat to it.

Food is also now recognized as intellectual property, meaning that ownership is being contested for cuisines, recipes, cooking styles, and even ingredients. Geographical indicators are used in many countries to designate the accurate origin of a food product, beginning with France, which established the Appellation d’ Origine Controllee in the early 1900s to protect cheeses and wines. This is based on the older concept of terroir (“taste of place”) and allows regions to claim certain types of produce as belonging to them. An arm of the government also sets standards by which any produce from a designated region can carry an AOC stamp of approval. Such geographical indicators directly benefit and are benefited by the culinary tourism industry in that they guarantee quality and authenticity. Tourism marketing then tends to treat them as a brand by which products can be known.

Many scholars of tourism now call for a more nuanced view of tourism that acknowledges these criticisms but also recognizes that tourism can offer both benefits and costs to all participants involved either directly or indirectly. Participants include tourists (guests), the host community, the government of the host community, the tourism suppliers or businesses connected to supply, and the natural environment. Each participant has their own perspective, so that what benefits one may be a cost or harmful to another. To further complicate matters, definitions of success might differ according to each perspective. As tourism scholar, Erve Chambers notes, tourism is complex, involving numerous players who construct their own meanings from tourist activities. 41 Although, more powerful nations and individuals have the opportunity to develop infrastructures and financial capital for a tourism industry, these “contradictions of tourism” exist regardless of who the tourist is.

These concerns are being addressed in the field of sustainable tourism, which argues that by carefully managing the resources for tourism (local economies, ecologies, and cultures) the tourism industry will not only help those resources endure but will also sustain itself. Culinary tourism offers a potentially powerful tool for sustainability. Similar to Slow Food’s vision of promoting food that is “good, clean, and fair,” it can encourage culinary “destinations” and “attractions” that are locally produced with environmentally friendly methods, and provide employment for members of the host culture. An issue arises from the culinary tourism industry’s frequent focus on gourmet ingredients or preparation methods appealing to elite, high-paying customers. In order to be competitive in the tourism marketplace, businesses need to offer something that is distinctive and unique and also has the highest margin between profit and production possible. This can mean that producers (chefs, farmers, restaurant managers) are brought in from outside the local culture, sometimes creating “leakage” (profits leave the host community) and culturally unsustainable products. For example, a gourmet restaurant in a small, culinarily conservative town, might bring in the occasional outside customer but not appeal to local eaters. Rather than creating an appreciation for local food culture, the tourism actually dismisses it. The folkloristic approach to culinary tourism attempts to counteract this possibility by promoting an understanding of the host culture’s cultural history, placing their food traditions within that history, and presenting them in ways that emphasize their local meanings. The Bowling Green Culinary Tourism Trail is a successful example of this “exoticizing the familiar.” Another approach to ensuring that culinary tourism is sustainable calls for a number of local food producers and distributers to collaborate, ideally with other public and private sectors to offer a systematically planned destination with a diversity of attractions. A cooperative of growers in Michigan provides an excellent example of such “clustering,” as it is called in the tourism industry.

As both a scholarly field of study and an initiative within the tourism industry, culinary tourism is complex and multifaceted. It also offers unique insights into not only numerous issues facing us today, but also possibilities for resolving those issues. Perhaps of utmost significance is its potential for encouraging the recognition of the power of food. It reflects our personal and cultural histories and ties us to all the external and internal forces shaping our lives. As food scholar Fabio Parasecoli points out in relation to food and tourism: “A deeper awareness of the political, non-neutral nature of semiotic processes defining codes and modalities of cultural exchange can help tourists to shift their location not only physically, but also culturally. Having a better grasp of the various signifying networks that make tourists define a phenomenon, in our case a dish or a product, as ‘typical’ or ‘local’ might help them learn how to occupy the subject position of the otherness, without losing the awareness of their own location.” 42 As such, culinary tourism offers the opportunity to explore not only other foods and cultures but also our own lives through food.

1. Respectively, Lisa M. Heldke, Exotic Appetites: Ruminations of a Food Adventurer (New York: Routledge, 2003) ; Lucy M. Long, ed., Culinary Tourism (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004) ; C. Michael Hall, et al., eds., Food Tourism Around the World: Development, Management and Markets (London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003) .

2. Ane-Mette Hjalager and Greg Richards, eds., Tourism and Gastronomy (London: Routledge, 2002) ; Priscilla Boniface, Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food Drink (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) ; C. Michael Hall and Liz Sharples, “The Consumption of Experiences or the Experience of Consumption? An Introduction to the Tourism of Taste,” in Hall, et al., Food Tourism Around the World , 1–24 .

3. Long, Culinary Tourism , 37–44; C. Michael Hall and Liz Sharples, Food and Wine Festivals and Events Around the World (London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008) .

4. Fabio Parasecoli, Bite Me: Food in Popular Culture (Oxford: Berg, 2008), 142 .

5. Donna R. Gabaccia, We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998) .

6. Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food (New York: Free Press, 2002), 223 .

7. David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) .

8. Warren Belasco, Appetite for Change: How the Counterculture Took on the Food Industry (1989; repr., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993) .

9. Jeffrey Steingarten, “Lost in Beijing,” Vogue (June 2008): 178–181, 203 .

10. Lucy M. Long, “Food Pilgrimages: Seeking the Authentic and Sacred in Food” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society, Boston, MA, June 2006) .

11. David J. Telfer and Atsuko Hashioto, “Food Tourism in the Niagara Region: The Development of a Nouvelle Cuisine,” in Hall, et al., Food Tourism Around the World , 158–77 ; Lucy M. Long, “Culinary Tourism and the Emergence of an Appalachian Cuisine: Exploring the Foodscape of Asheville, NC,” North Carolina Folklore Journal 57, no. 1 (2010): 4–19 ; Rosario Scarpato, “Sustainable Gastronomy as a Tourist Product,” in Hjalager and Richards, Tourism and Gastronomy , 132–53 .

12. See, for example, Bruce Geddes, Lonely Planet World Food Mexico (Hawthorn, Australia: Lonely Planet, 2000) .

13. For more information on ICTA, see Eric Wolf, Culinary Tourism: The Hidden Harvest (Dubuque, IA: Kendall Hunt Publishing, 2006) .

14. Wilbur Zelinsky, “The Roving Palate: North America’s Ethnic Restaurant Cuisines,” Geoforum 16, no. 1 (1985): 51 .

15. Rogert Abrahams, “Equal Opportunity Eating: A Structural Excursus on Things of the Mouth,” in Ethnic and Regional Foodways in the United States: The Performance of Group Identity , ed. Linda Keller Brown and Kay Mussell (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984), 19–36 .

16. Jay Ann Cox, “Eating the Other: Ethnicity and the Market for Authentic Mexican Food in Tucson, Arizona” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1993) .

17. David Bell and Gill Valentine, Consuming Geographies: We Are Where We Eat (London: Routledge, 1997), 6, 185–207 .

18. Bob Ashley, et al., Food and Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 2004), vii .

19. Brown and Mussell, Ethnic and Regional Foodways ; Lucy M. Long, “Culinary Tourism: A Folkloristic Perspective on Eating and Otherness,” Journal of Southern Folklore 55, no. 30 (1998): 181–203 .

20. David Beriss and David Sutton, eds., The Restaurants Book: Ethnographies of Where We Eat (Oxford: Berg, 2007) .

21. John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990) .

22. Daisy Tam and Nicola Frost, eds., “Food Journeys: Culinary Travels in Time and Space,” Food, Culture and Society 11, no. 2 (2008): 129 .

23. Kaori O’Connor, “The Hawaiian Luau: Food as Tradition, Transgression, Transformation and Travel,” Food, Culture and Society 11, no. 2 (2008): 149–72 ; Daisy Tam, “‘Slow Journeys,” Food, Culture and Society 11, no. 2 (2008): 207–18 .

24. C. Michael Hall, “Wine Tourism in New Zealand,” in Tourism Down Under II: Towards A More Sustainable Tourism , ed. G. Kearsley (Otago: University of Otago Centre for Tourism, 1996), 109–19 .

25. C. Michael Hall and R. Mitchell, “Wine and Food Tourism,” in Special Interest Tourism: Context and Cases , ed. N. Douglas and R. Derrett (New York: Wiley, 2001), 308 .

Hall, et al., Food Tourism Around the World , 10.

Boniface, Tasting Tourism , 23–25.

28. Erik Cohen and Nir Avieli, “Food in Tourism: Attraction and Impediment,” Annals of Tourism Research 31, no. 4 (2004): 755–78 .

29. Amy Bentley, “From Culinary Other to Mainstream American: Meanings and Uses of Southwestern Cuisine,” in Long, Culinary Tourism , 209–25 ; Abrahams, “Equal Opportunity Eating,” 19–36.

Long, Culinary Tourism , 32–34.

Heldke, Exotic Appetites , 163, 172.

32. Kevin Meethan, Tourism in a Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption (Basinstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 114 .

33. Richard Wilk, Home Cooking in the Global Village: Caribbean Food from Buccaneers to Ecotourists (Oxford: Berg, 2006), 172 ; George Ritzer, The McDonaldization of Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press, 1993) .

34. Lolis Eric Elie, ed., Cornbread Nation 2: The United States of Barbecue (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009) ; Lucy M. Long, Regional American Food Culture (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2009), 138–39 .

35. Kathy Neustadt, Clambake: A History and Celebration of an American Tradition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992) .

Long, “Culinary Tourism,” 4–19.

37. Susan Kalcik, “Ethnic Foodways in America: Symbol and the Performance of Identity,” in Brown and Mussell, Ethnic and Regional Foodways , 37–65 .

38. James L. Watson, ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) .

O’Connor, “The Hawaiian Luau,” 149–71.

40. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken, 1989) .

41. Erve Chambers, Native Tours: The Anthropology of Travel and Tourism (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 2000), 122 .

Parasecoli, Bite Me , 144–45.

Boniface Priscilla. Tasting Tourism: Travelling for Food Drink . Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003 .

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Hall, C. Michael, and Liz Sharples. Food and Wine Festivals and Events Around the World . London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2008 .

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Hall, C. Michael, et al. Food Tourism Around the World: Development, Management and Markets . London: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003 .

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Long, Lucy M. “ Culinary Tourism: A Folkloristic Perspective on Eating and Otherness. ” Southern Folklore 55, no. 3 ( 1998 ): 181–204.

——. “ Culinary Tourism and the Emergence of an Appalachian Cuisine: Exploring the Foodscape of Asheville, NC. ” North Carolina Folklore Journal 57, no. 1 ( 2010 ): 4–19.

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Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics pp 1–8 Cite as

Culinary Tourism

• Lucy M. Long 3  
• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 01 January 2014

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16 Citations

Cultural tourism ; Food tourism ; Gastronomic tourism ; Sustainable tourism

Introduction

Culinary tourism is the focus on food as an attraction for exploration and a destination for tourism. Although food has always been a part of hospitality services for tourists, it was not emphasized by the tourism industry until the late 1990s. It now includes a variety of formats and products – culinary trails, cooking classes, restaurants, farm weekends, cookbooks, food guides, and new or adapted recipes, dishes, and even ingredients. While most culinary tourism focuses on the experience of dining and tasting of new foods as a commercial enterprise, it is also an educational initiative channeling curiosity about food into learning through it about the culture of a particular cuisine, the people involved in producing and preparing it, the food system enabling access to those foods, and the potential contribution of tourists to sustainability.

Culinary tourism involves numerous issues; many...

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Boniface, P. (2003). Tasting tourism: Travelling for food drink . Burlington: Ashgate.

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Hall, C. M., & Sharples, L. (2008). Food and wine festivals and events around the world . London: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Hall, C. M., Sharples, L., Mitchell, R., & Macionis, N. (2003). Food tourism around the world: Development, management and markets . London: Butterworth-Heinemann.

Heldke, L. (2003). Exotic appetites: Ruminations of a food adventurer . New York: Routledge.

Heldke, L. (2005). But is it authentic? Culinary travel and the search for the ‘Genuine Article.’. In K. Carolyn (Ed.), The taste culture reader: Experiencing food and drink (pp. 385–394). New York: Berg.

Hjalager, A.-M., & Richards, G. (Eds.). (2002). Tourism and gastronomy . London: Routledge.

Long, L. (2004). Culinary tourism: Eating and otherness . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.

Long, L. M. (2010). Culinary Tourism in and the Emergence of Appalachian Cuisine: Exploring the “Foodscape” of Asheville, NC. North Carolina Folklore Journal 57.1 (Spring-Summer), pp. 4–19.

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Ritzer, G. (1993). The McDonaldization of society: An investigation into the changing character of contemporary social life. London: Pine Forge Press.

O’Connor, K. (2008). The Hawaiian Luau: Food as tradition, transgression, transformation and travel. Food, Culture, and Society, 11 (2), 149–171.

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Food, Culture, and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Journal of Sustainable Tourism . Taylor & Francis.

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David M. Kaplan

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Long, L.M. (2013). Culinary Tourism. In: Thompson, P., Kaplan, D. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6167-4_416-1

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Culinary Tourism: Exploring the Meanings of Food

Dr. Lucy M. Long

Food offers a window on the world and a mirror on ourselves. I’ve always loved exploring with food. Trying new tastes and ingredients. Learning about the history of a dish and the history of a culture through an ingredient. Meeting the people who grow and prepare food I’m eating.

When I started reading tourism scholarship in the early 1990s it was natural to apply it to food. And I was dismayed to find that food was only a sideline within hospitality services—or, worse, that trying new food was criticized as an expression of colonialist, hegemonic impulses. I knew that I was privileged to be able to explore food and not worry about having enough of it, but I also was respectful and learned about other people through food. Thus began my thinking about culinary tourism , and in 1996 at an American Folklore Society conference, I presented the phrase as a framework for exploring the meanings of eating other cultures’ foods. That led to publications and definitions—“eating out of curiosity,” “adventurous eating,” “the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of an Other.”

Unbundling Culinary Tourism

That unwieldy definition sounded academic enough to give the study of food credibility! But it also offers frameworks that expand our thinking about both food and tourism. I outline them here, and readers can apply them to their own situations and interests (and pocketbooks). Also, culinary tourism can occur at home, in one’s kitchen or library, but it frequently motivates travel.

Foodways —Food is more than just the stuff we eat. All the activities and thinking surrounding that stuff contribute to what it means—performance, concepts, production, procurement, preservation, preparation, presentation, consumption, and even cleanup and disposal. We can be culinary tourists, exploring a food culture, through any of those activities. Cooking classes are currently a popular way to learn about another cuisine and frequently include shopping in local markets, too. Helping out on a farm is another popular form, but few people think of cleaning up after eating as a way to be a tourist. It was an adventure to me though, as a city girl, to take the table scraps out to the chickens when I stayed in a village in Laos (and with my cousins in the Appalachian mountains). Similarly, preservation methods differ around the world and offer insights into a food culture —squid drying in the sun in Korea, fish frozen in snow in Alaska, grapes sundried into raisins, hams hanging in a smoke house.

“Other” —Culinary tourism can explore the foodways of other regions, religions, ethnicities, socioeconomic classes, genders, ages, families − any group different from the tourist’s familiar world. Even exploring locally grown products can be tourism for someone used to shopping in supermarkets! Exotic ingredients and dishes are fun, but what’s new and different to one person is old hat to another.

Venues —Restaurants are an obvious venue for culinary tourism, but festivals, fairs, holiday celebrations, grocery stores, cookbooks, cooking magazines, literature, films, television and the internet also offer wonderful opportunities for exploring food. I love to travel, but sometimes it’s just not possible, so these other media offer virtual travel. We can also look more closely at the food we eat every day, seeing and tasting it, as if we’re outsiders—discovering that it carries fascinating memories, histories and identities.

Most of all, though, culinary tourism offers a way to explore the various meanings of food and ways we can connect to and through food. It reminds us that we all need to eat to survive, but we all attach our own cultures, circumstances and personalities onto it. With that in mind: eat, taste, explore, and experience!

−By Dr. Lucy M. Long, Director, Center for Food and Culture

Culinary Tourism. By Lucy M. Long, ed. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Pp. xiv + 306, ISBN 0-8131-2292-9)

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Online publication: April 23, 2007

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Article body

This volume of twelve essays edited by Lucy M. Long brings together an impressive collection of established and emerging foodways scholars. In defining and developing the concept of culinary tourism, it is an important publication.

The book opens with a short foreword by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Kimblett and an introductory article by Lucy Long that traces the development of culinary tourism. Long encourages broadening the notion and her definition pushes boundaries. According to Long, culinary tourism is not just food for the tourist, but rather “the intentional, exploratory participation in the foodways of another — participation including the consumption, preparation, and presentation of a food item, cuisine, meal system, or eating style considered to belong to a culinary system not one’s own” (21). We engage in culinary tourism at home and in the food court as well as when we travel.

Building on this definition, Long and the other contributors offer several valuable interpretive typologies for types of otherness, foodways, venues for tourism, and strategies for negotiating otherness in cultural tourism (11). For example, in the context of foodways, Long suggests analysing “otherness” along two perpendicular axes: the first runs from Edible/Palatable to Inedible/Unpalatable while the second, intersecting continuum, extends from Exotic to Familiar. These analytic guides provide useful tools.

Articles offer a broad sampling of cross-cultural explorations of culinary tourism in three kinds of contexts: public and commercial; private and domestic; and constructed and emerging. Papers focussing on public contexts examine venues where food is not only being presented but is sold to outsiders: Thai restaurants, an Hawaiian festival, tourist industry’s uses of Mexican food, and Jewish food in contemporary Poland. Essays on culinary tourism in domestic contexts centre on familiar, informal settings where food is shared among family and friends. These papers explore an equally impressive spread as those in the first section, from aspects of Jewish and Basque American foodways to the experiences of Mormon missionaries in Guatemala. Finally, articles on culinary tourism in emerging contexts consider settings that are not historically bound but are actively being invented and negotiated. Studies focus on newer examples, examining southwestern American cuisine, the dynamics of ethnic foods in American contexts (the Catskills, Kansas, and Wisconsin), and baby boomers’ attraction to Asian food. Articles in all three sections underline food’s links to politics and explore culinary tourism’s connections to constructions of authenticity, memory, and most centrally, otherness.

One leaves Culinary Tourism with a deeper understanding of some of food’s complex relationships to the politics of culture. Although this collection feels more like a necessary foundation than an exciting departure, the book will undoubtedly serve as an important springboard for future work that further develops the interpretative challenges it introduces.

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Attracting Culinary Tourists

All materials.

Welcome to Attracting Culinary Tourists, an Elevating Canadian Experiences Webinar.

The goal of the webinar is to arm you with the information and tactics needed to attract culinary tourists to your destinations. This includes developing the ability to:

• differentiate between culinary tourism and other forms of tourism, while identifying examples of culinary experiences relevant to your region;
• describe the breadth and diversity of businesses involved in culinary tourism through deconstructing the culinary tourism value chain; and
• explain to tourism operators and stakeholders why culinary tourism is a vital component in servicing the needs of travellers.

This webinar also teaches you how to:

• distinguish between the various types of culinary tourists through an explanation of how the market segment has evolved;
• define foodways and integrate them into existing value propositions to meet the expectations of culinary tourists;
• identify opportunities to generate increased visitor demand through attracting culinary tourists; and
• Apply best practices and grassroots marketing tactics when attracting culinary tourists.

Welcome to Attracting Culinary Tourists, an Elevating Canadian Experiences webinar.

Before moving on in the webinar, please note the sidebar along your screen where links to external references and other resources will appear throughout the presentation.

At this time, it’s important to acknowledge the extraordinary value that Indigenous peoples across Canada bring to the tourism industry. The land and traditional territories of the First Nations, Métis, and Inuit provide unique culinary offerings that enhance the experiences for visitors to destinations all over the country.

Through the combined efforts of several organizations, including the Indigenous Tourism Association of Canada and Indigenous Culinary of Associated Nations, Indigenous culinary has grown into a popular driver for the development of tourism in Canada.

Elevating Canadian Experiences

The tourism sector is a key contributor to Canada’s economy, and there is opportunity to maximize its potential by showcasing our culinary excellence to tourists, both domestic and international, and expanding products and experiences into the shoulder and winter seasons.

Funded by the Government of Canada, the Elevating Canadian Experiences program offers tailored content to help destination marketing organizations and businesses develop strategies to boost culinary tourism as well as winter and shoulder season tourism across the country.

The ECE program is a team effort, in which deep research and shared knowledge are brought together to ensure tourism continues to thrive as an economic pillar in Canada.

Webinar Learning Outcomes

Module one: an introduction to culinary tourism, intro to culinary tourism.

Before attempting to attract culinary tourists to your destination, it’s important to understand the gap between the food & drink and tourism industries. By doing so, you’re able to identify ways to bridge that gap, which opens the door to developing compelling culinary experiences that drive tourism in Canada.

Bridging the Gap Between Food & Drink and Tourism

Although many restaurants don’t consider themselves as tourism businesses, it’s critical that those serving food and drink are open and ready to meet the needs of visitors to your destinations. Similarly, not all tourism businesses harness the value that the local culinary community adds to a destination’s product and service offerings.

The result is tourism attractions, such as museums, often sell food that has nothing to do with the place in which they operate.

This situation is not unique to Canada; in fact, destinations all around the world are continuing to serve the food that they think visitors want. However, our research shows there is consumer demand for higher quality culinary experiences that reflect the destination they’re visiting.

So, what does it mean to bring these two industries together through culinary tourism development?

In short, it means offering more meaningful and multisensory experiences that reflect your destinations. It also means stimulating visitor demand and localizing the economic impact on your tourism operators, businesses, and attractions.

And considering the current realities facing the two industries, a shift towards a culinary tourism model will also help build both resiliency and sustainability into Canadian tourism – especially in the post-pandemic era.

Now that we’ve identified the gap between the tourism industries, let’s define exactly what culinary tourism is. It’s considered “any tourism experience where a person interacts with food and drink that reflects the history, heritage, and culture of a place.”

Food tourism, and gastronomy tourism are other labels for culinary tourism, with one term being used over another depending on the destination; for example, gastronomy tourism is more often used in Europe.

The important thing to remember is that culinary tourism is focused on the meaningful connection between food and place.

There are countless activities and experiences associated with culinary tourism. A few examples are:

• apple picking at a local farm or orchard;
• making maple taffy while on a winter hike; or
• having a local and seasonal goods picnic at a remote location or conservation area.

It’s important to understand the diverse experiences associated with culinary tourism, because it shows that not all tourism experiences stand alone from food and beverage. In fact, there is often overlap, which must be consider when trying to attract culinary tourists to your destinations.

To explain, think about how rural tourism is enhanced when you combine it with a culinary-related experience, such as touring a wine region in an RV – with a designated driver, of course.

Or consider how outdoor adventures are complemented by culinary tourism, like a guided fishing trip ending with a shore lunch prepared by a local chef using seasonal ingredients from the region’s food producers.

Culinary Tourism Value Chain

Food & drink products and experiences are used by a variety of tourism businesses to capitalize on the growing popularity of culinary tourism. This led to the development of the culinary tourism value chain, which was designed to increase the competitive advantage of your destinations and their operators.

Given the limited capacity of a single service provider or attraction, businesses band together through collaboration in order to deliver combined value to consumers. This allows individual operators to remain focused on what they do best while benefiting from the increased efficiency and effectiveness of working as a collective.

Visitor experiences are also enriched with each layer of value they receive when exploring a destination. This presents the opportunity for your destinations’ culinary communities to form strategic partnerships with businesses and deliver multisensory experiences that exceed the expectations of visitors.

Any business that includes a taste of place or culinary experience as part of their offerings are featured in the value chain, such as:

• accommodations;
• attractions;
• beverage producers;
• cooking schools;
• farmers’ and public markets;
• festivals & events;
• growers, producers, and suppliers;
• foodservice operators;
• retailers; and
• tour operators.

The Future of Culinary Tourism

Prior to COVID-19, experiential travel was on the rise. And when the tourism industry finally rebounds from the pandemic, research suggests the trend will continue to rise in popularity.

We know there is pent-up demand for travel and consumers are seeking human connection more so than ever. Culinary tourism offers hands-on, multisensory experiences with local businesses and attractions and allows visitors to connect with your destinations in a more meaningful way.

Also, as we’ve seen in the past, and especially through the pandemic, consumers are increasingly more aware of their local food system. And travellers are no different, wanting to know where their food comes from when visiting a Canadian destination.

Culinary tourists are especially eager for hands-on experiences that allow them to interact with the people and stories of the places they visit. For them, it’s a way to get to know the destination better.

The pandemic has also shown that driving trips will be prioritized over flying, specifically with culinary tourism in mind. As such, there’s an opportunity to target Canadian travellers who wouldn’t normally travel within the country but are now looking at places closer to home.

This also indicates a shift to a more safety-conscious decision-making process about where, when, why, and how consumers travel for pleasure. Knowing this, businesses must develop communication strategies to educate travellers about how they are kept safe when visiting your destinations.

Aside from that, outdoor activities and attractions with fewer crowds are bound to be favoured in a post-COVID environment. It’s important to keep this factor in mind when developing culinary tourism experiences in your region.

Module Two: What Attracts Culinary Tourists?

So, what attracts travellers to remote and rural destinations?

As you know, urban regions often seek to attract a broad range of consumers who haven’t visited or seldom visit their destination. An international traveller from the U.K. or the U.S., for example, who might only travel to Canada once or twice in their lifetime.

A rural explorer, on the other hand, is often from a large urban area and looking to escape the bustle of the city. They are interested in day trips to the smaller communities surrounding where they live and are keen to make the most of their free time with family or as a couple. And if a relative or friend is visiting for a few days, these types of consumers will often suggest the unique culinary tourism or agritourism experiences nearby as something to do.

Rural explorers are looking for unique, quality experiences to discover, try, and be pleasantly surprised by. Which presents an opportunity for rural communities across Canada, as they are ideally position to fill the needs of travellers searching for hidden gems, quaint and tranquil sceneries, and small-town hospitality.

Don’t forget, these consumers aren’t interested in the most luxurious, most iconic places; they want to make discoveries off the beaten path, while connecting with nature and creating lasting memories with friends and family. They are also passionate about supporting local businesses and attractions and often seek out farm-to-table experiences when available.

Finally, rural explorers share their adventures with other tourists more often than international travelers, and the potential for repeat visits and additional product sales are much higher – even after they return to their urban homes.

Before moving on in the module, please refer worksheet now available in the sidebar.

In the worksheet, jot down a few points about one of your favorite trips, specifically what you remember about the culinary experiences in and around the destination.

Now, ask yourself:

• What role did food & drink play in making the trip one of your favourites?
• Why would people travel to that destination specifically for food and drink?

Module Three: Identifying and Understanding Culinary Tourists

Foodies and food-connected consumers.

Next, let’s identify exactly who culinary tourists are.

When talking about the culinary tourist, there is a common stereotype about who that person is. Many of us picture someone at a fancy restaurant, taking Instagram photos, and writing about culinary experiences on their food blog. They are the quintessential foodie and an important part of the market. But they are only part the story.

Although a foodie is very much a culinary tourist, they are only one part of much larger market segment. In fact, culinary tourists are a very diverse group who are motivated by experiential travel and want authentic connections with the destinations they visit.

In other words, culinary tourists are “visitors who plan their trips partially or totally in order to taste the cuisine of a place.” They are both consumers looking for exclusive meals at high-end restaurants as well as those craving street food from markets stalls, while some culinary tourists are agritourists looking to connect to where their food comes from.

Before defining the other segments of culinary tourists, let’s take a closer look at foodies first.

These are the classic, niche food tourists who plan some of their trips specifically around food and drink experiences. And even when they are travelling for other reasons, such as a business trip or family vacation, they are still looking for ways to incorporate local tastes into their itinerary.

Foodies are motivated by food and drink, of course, but they are also interested in a destination’s culinary-related activities and agritourism offerings. These consumers are informed and plan many of their experiences and must-visit attractions in a destination prior to their arrival; this includes making the necessary reservations for accommodation and transportation.

It’s important to note, culinary tourism is a direct subset of cultural tourism, which means many foodies can also be considered cultural tourists. As such, when attracting this type of traveller to your destination or business, remember to clearly communicate the local culture, unique culinary experiences, and experiential tourism offered.

It’s also imperative to have a strong online presence with an informative, accessible website that allows consumers to plan their trip ahead of time.

The second group of culinary tourists are food-connected consumers.

Remember, not all food tourists think of themselves as being that specific type of traveller. So, unlike foodies who often make decisions about travel based on food and drink, food-connected tourists view culinary experiences as a pleasant and enjoyable add on; but it’s not necessarily a determining factor when selecting a destination to visit.

As such, food-connected consumers typically don’t plan all of their culinary experience in advance. This presents an opportunity to spontaneously attract these consumers to your businesses and attractions after they’re arrived to the destination.

To explain, consider a traveller who happily stops by a farmers’ market because the owner of the local B&B recommended it to them. In this case, they didn’t specifically seek out the experience, but having it suggested to them added a multisensory element to their stay, which made the trip that much more memorable.

A third type of culinary tourist is the agritourist, which is a niche segment within food tourism.

Many culinary tourists enjoy agritourism activities, like berry picking and visiting farm stands; however, agritourists take their passion for food and drink a step further, seeking out first-hand experiences such as watching demos, joining a farm tour, or even volunteering to stomp grapes at a local vineyard.

Agritourists are also interested in food production and want to learn about the people, places and practices involved in the agriculture of a destination.

For operators trying to attract this type of culinary tourist, watch the Elevating Canadian Experiences webinar, Growing Agritourism, which is now linked in the sidebar.

Other Types of Tourists and Tourism

The final type of culinary tourist is every other type of travelling consumer.

When you expand your definition of culinary tourism and the culinary tourist, it’s easier to identify the ways you can localize dollars within your region. Remember, all tourists have to eat, and in turn, that creates an opportunity to boost tourism through unique experiences with food and drink.

Even if someone’s primary reason to visit is having an outdoor or rural experience, as a business, there are ways you can enhance their trip through culinary offerings. This is true for restaurants and food providers, but there’s also potential for attractions, accommodations, and festivals as well.

Sometimes, all it takes is good storytelling to convince a visitor the extra dollar for a local product is more than worth it. The key is to connect consumers to the real people – the growers, producers, brewers, and so on – behind the scenes.

When you use the power of this type of local upsell, what you’re doing is turning a general tourist into a culinary tourist. And by doing so, you’re also encouraging them to support the local economy in your destinations.

Food and drink is only a primary motivator to visit a destination for a select group of tourists: foodies. Meaning, culinary tourism doesn’t live in isolation, and more often than not, culinary experiences are seen as a complement to other tourism activities.

This is beneficial as not every destination has the ability to provide a complete food tourism experience. But that doesn’t mean food and drink aren’t still a very important part of the offering. To this point, 88.2% of destinations consider gastronomy a strategic element in defining their image and brand – even if it’s not the main draw of the region.

To explain, consider the history buff who visits a destination to explore its heritage sites and museums. During their trip, their interactions with food and drink, enjoying homemade ice cream while touring a historical town, for example, are what help create a well-rounded and truly memorable experience.

With that in mind, at the destination level, this presents opportunity to build out culinary experiences alongside your primary tourism draws.

Module Four: Attracting Niche Markets to Your Business

When it comes to attracting these niche markets – foodies, food connected consumers, and agritourists – to your business, the strategies are different than luring an international traveler to a major destination like Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver.

Don’t expect your business, particularly small restaurants and farm attractions, to be automatically added to an itinerary because of its immediate appeal. Your products and services are more likely to be complementary to the trip and experienced outside of the traveller’s itinerary.

As such, it’s important to tailor your marketing accordingly, knowing your business is something a visitor will discover once they’ve arrived to the area – or as a special stop along their way from one place to the next. Partnering with main-draw attractions or tourism operators and creating unique packages is another opportunity to attract culinary tourists.

And when you offer authentic, multisensory experiences tied to the people and places of a destination, your business has the chance to become an unexpected highlight.

Before we move on in the module, thinking back to your responses about your favourite trip and how culinary experiences made it more memorable. In the second worksheet now available in the sidebar, expand upon thoughts by answering the following questions:

• How does access to local food and drink affect the destination’s offering?
• How could this destination be strengthened by local food supply chains?
• Do you know where their food supplies coming from? If so, include those locations in your answer.

Genuine and Immersive Experiences

Generally, tourists are looking for authenticity and great experiences tied to the place they’re visiting – which highlights the importance of creating genuine and immersive culinary offerings that connect ingredients, production, and processes to the local culture and traditions.

For instance, in Bangkok, a unique experience is the floating market, where canals are lined with “street food” suppliers. It’s a decades’ long tradition in Bangkok, and part of local, everyday life, but for a traveler, it’s an incredible farm-to-fork experience unique to the destination.

Multisensory Experiences

Next, developing multisensory experiences is vital when attracting culinary tourists to your business. This means taste holds as much weight as sight, sound, smell, and touch.

In other words, food and drink is complemented by all the other types of sensory experiences. In the Bangkok example, food is only part of the draw; it’s a combination of the boat ride, the smells and sounds of the bustling market, and the interesting scenery that makes the experience truly memorable.

In a nutshell, a multisensory experience appeals to all five senses, with food and drink being the only tourism offering capable of doing so. This is why it’s important for businesses with unique culinary products to offer authentic and immersive experiences, such as tastings or on-farm samplings, where all five senses are engaged.

For operators looking for more information on creating this kind of experience, watch the Elevating Canadian Experiences webinar, Multisensory Experience Development, now linked in the sidebar.

Risks & Barriers

We’ve discussed some of the opportunities of attracting niche markets to your business, but what about some of the challenges?

Let’s take a look at what would deter a tourist from participating in an immersive culinary experience.

Safety is one of the primary concerns for travellers considering a food tourism or agritourism experience. Consider the floating market in Bangkok and the potential for water-related accidents; or visiting a Canadian farmstead and the dangers associated with being on a working farm.

Whether it’s picking fruits and vegetables, foraging for mushrooms, or floating on a river and tasting new foods, there are perceived risks to culinary tourism as well as real ones – even more so following a global crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

To reduce fear and build trust with consumers, it’s important to address these risks ahead of time and clearly communicate how your prioritizing the safety of visitors. This starts with identifying all the risks surrounding your experiences; and don’t forget, what appears safe and routine to you, might be totally new to a tourist and outside of their comfort zone.

It’s important to remember, similar to most consumers, tourists will often choose something more familiar than an activity with too much uncertainty surrounding their safety and comfort.

Attracting Niche Markets to Your Business

So, how do you infuse authenticity through local cuisine and traditions into your own business, and how can you create multisensory experiences within your destination?

First, by identifying foodways and where your ingredients come from, and then highlighting why those specific products are important and how they’re connected to your destination’s culture and traditions. This includes why these offers are unique to your business the community you operate in.

Businesses offering authentic and immersive experiences offer layers of value not only with their products or services, but also with the stories told by the owners, their staff, and even their local customers.

Module Five: Defining Foodways

Before moving on in the presentation, let’s refer back to your favourite trip again. You can record your thinking in a third worksheet that is now available for download in the sidebar. During your culinary experiences:

• Were you ever curious about how the food and drink was prepared?
• Did you think about the ingredients used and where they came from?
• Or did you consider whether the cooking techniques and agricultural practices were tied to local culture and traditions?

When you start to think about the journey your food takes from farm-to-table, an interesting story unfolds.

A good example of this how there are multiple versions of a tourtière in Quebec, with each being declared as the original, featuring their own unique stories and flavours depending the region and seasonality of ingredients.

Generally speaking, tourtière, six-pates, and pâté à la viande are all types of meat pies in Quebec. However, the recipes – from the ingredients used, the availability of the meats, the spices, and so on – differ from region to region. So much so, strong competing views exists in the province on what a tourtière really is.

Ask a Saguenéen what a tourtière is, and they’ll give you a very different answer from someone in Gaspé, while another chef in the Montérégies will claim their recipe as being the most authentic. That’s a prime example of a culinary tourism experience that is directly tied to a destination because the pies reflect local cultures and traditions.

In an increasingly globalized world, why do we continue to associate maple syrup with Canada, tacos with Mexico, risotto with Italy, and wontons with China?

You’ll find these foods in the markets and restaurants of your hometown, but many of us will still travel a great distance to try these dishes in the places they originate from. You see, the history of food and drink is often regional, with the ingredients naturally tied to local history, culture, and the landscape.

Which is to say, tacos, risotto, and wontons are more than just menu items; they’re a manifestation of a destination and its regional foodways.

So what are foodways?

Consider foodways as:

• the connection between agriculture and the people of a place;
• the driver of regional culture and traditions; and
• the main contributor to shaping the landscape and livelihoods of the communities across Canada.

This is why culinary tourism plays such an important role in celebrating and protecting rural heritage in your destinations.

Foodways are dynamic. They change in relation to social, economic, and environmental conditions, which is why there are unique stories related to foodways in every destination. Foodways are the who, what, where, when, why, and how of food – they are the reason food becomes part of the fabric of a community.

So, if you offer a culinary tourism experience, foodways are an important piece of the puzzle. Think about the suppliers you support with the food and drink you offer travellers:

• Where do the ingredients come from?
• How are they tied to your region and local traditions?

These elements are something visitors are eager to connect to. Don’t miss an opportunity to share those stories and reflect local foodways in the experiences you offer.

Tastes of Place

Another element to consider are the Tastes of Place , which directly connect locals and visitors to foodways. These are the interactions and experiences that bring life to the stories behind the food and drink of your region.

That said, there is no single taste of place for a destination. For instance, the tourtière isn’t solely associated to Quebec, nor is the dish a complete reflection of the culinary offerings in its many destinations. No, instead, think of the tastes of place as a compilation of experiences and interactions with the food and drink available in your region.

And remember, it’s not just about the ingredients and flavours of a dish, but it’s also about connecting travellers with the people, places, and foodways contributing along the way.

Intangible Assets

Tastes of place aren’t always things that you eat and drink; they can also include intangible assets, such as rural hospitality, agricultural landscapes, community feel and good company. Through storytelling you can tie all these pieces together and make the connections more obvious for visitors.

By including memorable experiences in your business and tying them to the region, you connect to the foodways and create a bond between the destination and traveller, making the experience unique and more meaningful.

Culinary tourism can move a trip from great to unforgettable, with food and drink adding an additional sensory layer to the memories – that of taste. And local food is an excellent way to deliver this type of experience.

The concept of farm-to-fork, or sea-to-table, is about connecting diverse local supplies to authentic culinary experiences. Doing so creates added value, which most tourists desire and are often willing to pay a little extra for – from paying a dollar more for a local craft beer to seeking out food and drink retailers with specialized goods and unique atmospheres unlike anything found at the average grocery store.

Personal vs. Regional Foodways

That said, local food is not the be all and end all of culinary tourism. It’s also important to consider the evolution of recipes when exploring a region’s foodways. Think of an Indian restaurant on Vancouver Island: perhaps they offer a local blueberry lassi alongside the traditional mango variety.

This is a cultural fusion reflecting the influence of local ingredients on traditional recipes. Yes, local food and drink plays a key role in defining the foodways of an area, but in this instance, local sourcing is not essential to food tourism development. Instead, the personal or regional foodways are a more important highlight.

For some travelers, food is more than sustenance; it’s a way of understanding a place. That’s why showcasing foodways through storytelling is so important when communicating tastes of place to visitors – it illustrates personal food journeys and makes the consumer’s experience more meaningful.

A simple example of this is when a menu explains a family restaurant’s connection to the dishes they offer and the foodways that brought the ingredients to the visitor’s plate.

Tips for Integrating Foodways

To help you integrate foodways into the development of culinary tourism in your destination, please refer to the following five tips. You can also download the full list of tips for reference through the link now available in the sidebar.

• Tip 1: Offer a unique “taste of place” or expression of your region and understand how your business fits into the regional food tourism narrative. Most importantly, let people know that you do this to attract food tourists to your business.
• Tip 2: Identify where your ingredients and products are sourced from, including promoting your suppliers
• Tip 3: Celebrate your partnerships within the local community, including online
• Tip 4: Share stories about the recipes you use and the food you serve, and how it is tied to the region or your family history, both in person and online
• Tip 5: Offer tastings, trainings, and/or educational opportunities that empower your staff with the knowledge required to sell your food, because if the owner isn’t always present, staff need to know the stories too.

Module Six: Reaching the Market

So far we’ve discussed how to attract niche markets such as culinary tourists. Now, let’s touch on how your reach these types of consumers. Fill out these reflection questions in the new worksheet available in the sidebar.

Before we dive into this section, let’s think back to your trip memory again. Recall that favourite trip and reflect on these two questions, including the most common responses:

• How did you learn about the experience before selecting it as part of your travel itinerary?
• Was it an experience you planned for before leaving, or something that was impromptu and complementary?

Use the Right Mediums

People are getting their news from an ever-increasing list of non-traditional mediums. Such as:

• news apps; and
• review sites

Having a website isn’t enough today. Keep in mind, if a consumer has browsed your website and is ready to purchase a product or an experience, it’s likely that individual was attracted to the site by many other forms of media beforehand.  Your website is often the last path to purchase, so it’s important to consider how you’re driving traffic to your website.

Remember, your audience is ‘hungry’ for easy to digest, engaging, beautiful content and they are using modern tools and apps to do so. This highlights the importance of connecting to consumers using the right mediums, while providing relevant content that educates, entertains, and inspires.

It’s also important to note the current trends of popular media. In this case, visuals – such as captivating images and videos – receive more engagement in the form of shares, likes, and comments.

Social Media Content

Education and awareness are key elements to creating a lasting impression online. Social media can drive sales, yes, but rather than selling a product through your posts, seek to inform, guide, and educate your followers instead.

The internet is a noisy place, with consumers being bombarded by advertising and sales messages at every turn. To stick out from the crowd, focus on drawing travellers to your website by telling inspiring and educational stories about your destinations and the experiences you offer.

Your posts don’t have to be picture-perfect either; as long as you offer value through interesting and engaging content, visitors are more likely to be interested to learn more.

For instance, a farmer can share a short, simple video on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok explaining the growing process of apples. Or the owner of a local seafood shop can share a short blog post about their first time catching lobster and how the experience inspired them to follow fishing as a career path.

These are types of stories and content that create excitement around your destination and the businesses within it. Again, it’s about highlighting the connection between the ingredients, the place, the agricultural techniques, and the people who make up the culinary experiences you offer.

Engaging Through Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)

Destination Marketing Organizations and Provincial Marketing Organizations, TripAdvisor, Yelp, and AirBnB experiences are all examples of Online Travel Agencies and tourism social media channels.

Claiming your space on any of these platforms presents you with opportunities to connect directly with consumers and potential visitors. And don’t’ forget, clients leave reviews on these channels, so one of the best way to stay top-of-mind is to review the pages of the businesses within your destination and responding quickly to customer reviews – whether they are positive or negative.

Prepare your messages in advance if you want to save time, but try and make each response as personalized as possible – you don’t want to sound like a robot! Be responsive, spontaneous, and use humour when appropriate. Most importantly, be respectful, genuine and show compassion when answering reviews.

Engaging consumers through Online Travel Agencies is the perfect opportunity to showcase the whole culinary experience, not just the taste. The temptation is to just post pictures of our storefront, restaurant, barn space, or picturesque scenery, but it’s the food and the ambiance of a destination are what attract culinary tourists the most.

So focus on what you serve; not your space. And don’t be afraid to showcase the ingredients you use along with where they are sourced from, especially if it’s local.

Brand Positioning & Storytelling Tips

Finally, to help you establish a strong brand positioning and attract culinary tourists through the power of storytelling, please refer to the following tips, which are also available in a final download in the sidebar.

• Tip 1: Include high-quality photos of food products and experiences in your online presence
• Tip 2: Share food-based updates through your social media channels and encourage customers to do the same
• Tip 3: Actively collect feedback from customers on your food products and/or experiences
• Tip 4: Facilitate positive reviews of your food products and experiences on review sites and respond constructively to negative comments, as appropriate
• Tip 5: Know the key components of your food and drink story and share these consistently
• Tip 6: Share your story in diverse ways, both in person and online
• Tip 7: Ensure visitors leave your establishment with a clear understanding of your food and drink story
• Tip 8: Empower staff to be ambassadors for the region who can recommend other food and drink experiences for visitors to enjoy

Thank you for your participation. Be sure to check out other culinary tourism webinars offered in the Elevating Canadian Experiences content hub.

For more information, or if you have any questions, please visit culinarytourismalliance.com .

Related Resources

Culinary tourism strategy development pilots, 05 approaching strategy development, 04 goal setting.

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Resetting the table: the history of foodways in vicksburg.

Last updated: October 11, 2023

2018 Primetime Emmy & James Beard Award Winner

A History of Moscow in 13 Dishes

Jun 06 2018.

War, hunger, and some of the world’s great doomed social experiments all changed the way that Moscow eats.

Moscow, the European metropolis on Asia’s western flank, has always been a canvas for competing cultures. Its cuisine is no different. The ancient baselines of winter grains, root vegetables, and cabbage acquired scaffolding from both directions: eastern horsemen brought meat on sticks, western craftsmen brought pastries, and courtly French chefs came and drowned it all in cream.

History has a place on the plate here, as well: war, hunger, and some of the world’s great doomed social experiments from Serfdom to Communism to Bandit Capitalism all changed the way that Moscow eats. So in the spirit of all of those grand failures, we—a Russian chef and an American writer—will attempt here to reduce the towering history of this unknowable city to 13 dishes, with some Imperial past but a special emphasis on the more recent decades of culinary paroxysms as Moscow emerged from its Soviet slumber.

Olivier Salad

To visualize the long marriage between French and Russian cuisines, picture Peter the Great, on a diplomatic sojourn to Paris in 1717, a “ stranger to etiquette ”, meeting the 7-year-old boy-king Louis XV and lifting him in the air out of sheer elán. These things were simply not done, and yet, there they were. Peter’s joyful (and often envious) fascination with all things French took hold, among other places, in the kitchen. He brought French chefs back to his palaces, and then the lesser nobility followed suit, and when the first restaurants emerged in Moscow, they also spoke French. The Hermitage Restaurant, which was open from 1864 until history intervened in 1917, had a Francophone Belgian named Lucien Olivier as a chef, and he made a salad that was a perfectly unrestrained combination of French flavors and Russian ingredients: grouse! Veal tongue! Proto-mayonnaise! The ingredients now tend toward the pedestrian—boiled beef, dill pickles, various vegetables all bound with mayonnaise—and it has become a staple of Russian cuisine, especially on New Year’s. And yes, if you’ve ever seen the lonely Ensalada Rusa wilting behind the sneezeguard of a Spanish tapas bar, that is supposed to be a successor to the Olivier. But in Moscow, you should eat Matryoshka ’s version, which is not the original recipe but has some of that imperial richness: crayfish, quail, sturgeon caviar, and remoulade, all under a translucent aspic skirt, for 990₽ ($16).

There’s a type of expression around bottling things—bottled lightning, summer in a jar, etc.—that feels very apt here. What exactly is bottled with vareniye (jam)? A lot more than just fruit. These jams, which tend to be thinner than western varieties—with whole berries or fruit chunks in syrup—are bottled with a lot of Russian identity. There’s the Russian love of countryside. Deep dacha culture of summer cottages and personal orchards. Traditional naturopathy (raspberry vareniye taken with tea will fight fever). And above all, friendship is bottled here— vareniye made from the overabundance of fruit at one’s dacha is the most typical Russian gift, real sharing from real nature, even in the often-cynical heart of Europe’s largest megacity. Visitors who are short on lifelong friendships in Moscow can pick some up fine vareniye at any Lavka Lavka shop (we recommend the delicate young pine cone jam) or, curiously enough, at many Armenian stores.

Borodinsky Bread

The clinical-sounding title of Lev Auerman’s 1935 classic Tekhnologiya Khlebopecheniya ( Bread Baking Technology) doesn’t promise scintillation. But Auerman’s recipe for rye bread changed Russian bread forever. An older legend had it that the bread was baked dark for mourning by a woman widowed in the battle of Borodino in 1812, but the real birth of the bread came from Auerman’s recipes. A modification on sweet, malted Baltic breads, Auerman’s Borodinsky bread was 100% rye and used caraway or anise. The recipe has evolved a bit—today it is 80% rye and 20% wheat high extraction flour and leans more on coriander than caraway. But its flavor profile (sweet, chewy) as well as its characteristic L7 mold —a deep brick of bread—has made it easily identifiable as the traditional, ubiquitous, every-occasion bread of Moscow. You can buy it everywhere, but the Azbuka Vkusa high-end markets have a reliably good sliced version.

Buckwheat Grechka

Look closely at those Russians who have followed their money to live in London, or are vacationing in Cyprus or Antalya. See the slight melancholy that not even cappuccinos or sunshine can erase. It’s not because Russians are gloomy by nature; it’s probably because there is no real grechka outside of Russia and Ukraine, and that is devastating. Buckwheat grain and groats— grechka (or grecha in Saint Petersburg)—are deep in the culture. It’s a wartime memory: May 9 Victory Day celebrations feature military kitchens serving buckwheat like they did at the front. It’s a little slice of Russian history that lies somewhere between oatmeal and couscous. In Moscow, eat it at Dr. Zhivago with milk (180₽/US$2.90) or mushrooms (590₽/US$9.50), and rejoice.

Mimoza Salad

This fantastically expressive egg-and-canned-fish salad is a testament to Soviet ingenuity—it’s the ultimate puzzle to make a drastically limited food chain sparkle—and the universal human thrill of layering foods. The geological creation starts with a base layer of fish, then layers of grated cooked potato, mayonnaise, shredded cheese, grated carrots, sweet onion, diced egg whites and then capped with a brilliant yellow crumble of boiled egg yolk. It sits there on the plate, dazzling like the flowering mimosa tree it is named after. The taste? Well, it’s comfort food. Pick some up to go at any Karavaev Brothers location —the excellent deli chain sells it for 650₽ (US$10.40) a kilo.

It seems odd, almost impossible, to imagine a time in Russia before shashlik. It’s meat on a stick, something that all humans should have had on the menu since at least the time of Prometheus. But shashlik as we know it know—cubes of marinated meat cooked with vegetables over a mangal grill—didn’t really take off in Russia until the early 1900s. And due to a lack of suitable meat in much of the Soviet era (there were no meat cattle herds, only dairy), we’re starting the clock on shashlik in the late Soviet period. Despite its relatively recent (re)appearance, it is now the ubiquitous grill phenomenon of Russia, a welcome ritual of summer.

Much of Russian cuisine has borrowed heavily from Central Asia and further east over the millennia ( pelmeni anyone?), but plov is a striking example of an entire eastern dish making its way directly into Russian households. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and upheaval in many Central Asian Soviet Republics, mass economic migration to Moscow took off in the late 80s and early 90s. Central Asians today are the lifeblood of the Moscow labor force (part of up to 10-12 million Central Asian migrants living in Russia), and plov—rice steamed in stock with meat and vegetables—has jumped from the migrant communities to the homes of Muscovites everywhere. It has developed an unfortunate reputation for being a food that even finicky kids will eat, so there is a lot of harried domestic plov being made. But you can get a fully expressed Uzbek version at Danilovsky Market, online at plov.com , or at Food City—the surf-and-turf Tsukiji of Moscow.

The Big Mac

So many of the difficulties in American-Russian relations come down to one foundational attitude problem: The Americans (that’s half of this writing duo) were incredibly, distressingly smug through the entire fall of the Soviet Union. We mistook Soviet failure for an American victory, and that made all the difference. What does that have to do with a Big Mac? Well, when Russia’s first McDonald’s opened on Pushkinskaya in 1990 and 5000 people turned out to wait in line for the first taste of America, we back home in the states mistook it for culinary and commercial superiority. But there was something more complicated happening: Russians had been denied Western goods for so long and with such force that any outside identity was much-needed oxygen. And the long-term victory, as McDonald’s has continued to thrive in post-Soviet Russia, really belongs to the local franchise, which used higher-quality ingredients than in the U.S. and created a chain that was successful not because of its American identity but because of its Russian modifications. We wouldn’t recommend eating at any McDonald’s, especially not when there is Teremok for your fast-food needs, but having a soda in the original location is one way to sit and ponder the sin of hubris. And to use the free toilet and Wi-Fi.

The crown jewel of Levantine meat preparations, perhaps the single greatest street meat in the world: Shawarma. It first came to Moscow with a shawarma joint across from the Passazh mall, opened in the early 90s by Syrian cooks who dazzled masses with their sizzling, spinning, spiced meat emporium. Lines that stretched into the hundreds of people weren’t uncommon in those heady early days. And even though the original spot closed many years ago, Moscow shawarma only grew from there, mutating into the beast it is today, where you’re likely to find chicken, cabbage, mayo and a thin tomato sauce all combining to make the Levant a distant memory.

Fish Tartare aka Sashimi

One result of the aforementioned American smugness is that the West seemed surprised at how rapidly 1990s Russia assimilated some of the most hardcore capitalist traits, including but not limited to conspicuous consumerism. Moscow’s new elite was very, very good at that. What could be more conspicuous that recreating a restrained, exclusive seafood cuisine from Japan in the chaotic, landlocked megacity of Moscow? The very improbability of high-end sushi and sashimi in Moscow fueled much of its allure, and even though the trends have moved on from sushi, you can still tell the emotional attachment that the oligarch class has to those formative wastes of money. Sumosan restaurant started in Moscow back in 1997 and has since expanded to Monte Carlo and Londongrad , where they serve a dish that they call Fish Tartare, among others, in their restaurants and through their private jet catering service.

Blue Cheese roll

If the early elite sushi restaurants in Moscow were the frivolous edge of a food phenomenon, then Yakitoriya , a chain which started in the late 1990s, democratized it with affordable sushi rolls geared to local tastes. The Blue Cheese Roll, available now on their menu, seems like the apex (or nadir) of the Russianized roll: salmon, smoked eel, cucumber, cream cheese, Blue Cheese sauce. It might not be Jiro’s dream, but a true Russian middle class, one that can work honestly, earn meaningful salaries, and have a freaky sushi roll at the end of the week just like the rest of us—that’s something worthing dreaming for. Blue Cheese Roll, Yakitoriya, 417₽ (US$6.70)

If you’re American, have you ever wondered why tacos took over middle America but sopes remain virtually unknown? It’s curious how a country can assimilate some foods from their neighbors and but remain blissfully ignorant of others. That may explain what took place two years ago in Moscow, when the city seemingly discovered, as if for the first time, the bagged awesomeness that is khinkali , a soup dumpling from Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia. It became very trendy very quickly, and khinkali joints sprouted across Moscow like griby after a rain. But it wasn’t just that dish: what they were serving was a bit of the imagined southern, sybaritic lifestyle of the Caucasus, as promised in restaurant names like Est’ Khinkali Pit Vino ( Eat Khinkali Drink Wine ). Your best bets are at the stately Sakhli , around 100₽ (US$1.60) per soft, fulsome dumpling, or the more modernized Kafe Khinkalnaya on Neglinnaya Street , 100₽ (US$0.80) a dumpling.

We have named burrata—yes, that Italian alchemy of cheese and cream—the Perfect Dish of Moscow 2018, if only because it is the Dish of the Moment, ready to be enjoyed at the height of its faddishness now, and equally ready to be replaced when the city decides to move on. Read Anna Maslovskaya’s masterful breakdown of why—and where—to eat burrata in Moscow.

Top image: Olivier salad with chicken. Photo by: Kvector /Shutterstock

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The Perfect Dish: The Moscow Burrata

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David Moscow travels the world to discover deliciousness From Scratch

By cristine struble | feb 29, 2020.

Have you wondered why some meals just taste better? David Moscow goes on a food adventure in the new show From Scratch and uncovers the secret to delicious food.

Sometimes the most memorable meals have a story behind them. David Moscow discovers the stories behind the food can and do create the most delicious dish. In the new television series, From Scratch , this culinary adventure can encourage foodies to explore the beauty of making food from scratch.

While the home kitchen holds a bounty of deliciousness, sometimes convenience overtakes cooking from scratch. When a cook takes the time to use quality ingredients, appreciate the craftsmanship and uncover the passion behind the ingredients, that meal can become more than just sustenance. It can become a gift.

In the new FYI series , From Scratch , David Moscow goes on a culinary journey. As he travels the world, David seeks to recreate a chef’s recipe. But, this show is more than just cooking. David explores the stories behind each of those ingredients. Through this culinary adventure, people see that food is intertwined with a country’s history and culture.

Many people might know David Moscow from his feature film debut in Big . Over the years he has numerous film, television and stage credits. Additionally he co-developed and co-produced the first stage production of In the Heights and has produced several films. In this new FYI show, he puts himself into the food world.

In the first ten episodes of From Scratch , David dives into a culinary world that many foodies would dream to discover. Even though more people are appreciating farm to table cuisine, David takes that approach to the source. From milking a cow to make butter to foraging for the perfect ingredient for a dish, the show proves that ingredients bring the story of food to the table.

Recently, David Moscow graciously answered some questions about his new show, From Scratch . While some people may not have the opportunity to go on this extraordinary culinary adventure, the lessons learned from his experience can be brought to any home cook’s table.

Cristine Struble: Many Americans are focused on convenient food (or delivery, grab & go), how can your show get people to discover the deeper connection that food can bring a person?

David Moscow: While sourcing ingredients is definitely hard and hard to find time for in our demanding days/schedules, it also can be quite fun and sometimes even exciting. These thrills are present all across the season. But they also sit right up alongside the simple pleasures of wandering in the woods looking for mushrooms or fishing on a river under a midnight sun. The hope is that our show will shake that love of nature and the joy that come with work particularly when it ends in a pizza pie.

CS: There is a growing movement to know your farmer or know where food comes from – do you think that people are understanding that where food comes from impacts the how food tastes?

DM: There are a couple oppositional things happening at once. At the same time that a few people are able to take the time and money to know where our food is coming from, the majority are becoming even more removed through delivery apps and the growth of fast food. Thoughtless eating has never been such a problem. BUT we are only a generation or two away from a healthy interaction with the food we eat. And I do think that all people still pine for making fresh food and eating it with friends around – something that is innately part of being human.

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CS: As you traveled the world, did you find that food traditions are stronger in some countries?

DM: I found that there was a direct relationship with free time, a social safety net and strong food traditions. Places like Iceland, Sardinia and Finland have little fast food and place great importance in the people who harvest and source the meals they eat. Some of the other places are fighting to keep their traditions alive in the face of the cheap fast food everywhere in modern life.

CS: While many people think that global cuisines are very different, there are often some underlying similarities. What similarities surprised you the most?

DM: When building the episodes for the show, we found that there aren’t that many major ingredients across the planet. A huge chunk of what we eat are grass, seeds, fish and few other animals. And we eat these things with the help of fire or fermentation. Cooking meat on a grill and making alcohol out of fermenting food is everywhere.

CS: This show seems to encourage people to better understand the food and culture connection. What’s one easy way to start that type of food conversation on the typical family home?

DM: I think apple picking (or any kind of fruit picking) as a family outing is an amazing starting point. It gets you out in the fresh air and gets your blood flowing – and I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like a crisp apple pulled from a tree. During the shoot I sat my son down in a strawberry patch to graze before he could walk. The act of picking and eating with his own hands has had a lasting effect. Strawberry was one of his first words and still to today is his favorite fruit to eat.

CS: You travel the world in this series. Which location was your favorite? Which meal was your favorite?

DM: Each one of the places I went was a spot I had dreamed of going and each has a special place in my heart. How can I compare going on a safari in South Africa vs taking a boat off the Amalfi coast. I would say the same with the food. I had the best pizza on the planet and the best tacos. I had incredible Icelandic seafood and Finnish lake fish. They each stand alone.

If you would like to follow along with David Moscow’s culinary adventure, From Scratch airs on FYI and can be streamed online. New episodes air on Sundays at 6 p.m. ET/ 5 p.m. CT.

6 Gordon Ramsay recipes inspired by Gordon Ramsay Uncharted. light. Related Story

Do you know the story behind the ingredients on your plate? Take the time to appreciate the flavor, the story and the journey when cooking is made from scratch.

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Maha Songkran World Water Festival 2024

Let’s have fun with the festive activities: fantastic parades, concerts, and EDM in a Thai style. Enjoy Thailand’s tallest dancing fountain show and the stunning performances of more than 1,200 drones in choreographed patterns.  ​See you from 11-15 April, 2024, at Ratchadamnoen Klang Road and Sanam Luang, Bangkok.  ​On the occasion of “Thai Songkran” being enlisted as part of UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage, this year, TAT invites everyone to enjoy the magnificent Thai New Year celebration, preserve our priceless tradition, and splash happiness across all the places.  ​Witness the spectacular Maha Songkran parades moving along Ratchadamnoen Klang Road, led by Miss Thailand Universe 2023, Anntonia Porsild as the Songkran Goddess, followed by the parades representing 16 provinces, Thailand’s soft power showcases, including an LGBTQ parade.  Special for you, we provide you the 2,000 seats exclusively on 11-12 April, 2024.  ​Enjoy the concerts at Sanam Luang for 5 consecutive days. The headliners include 4Eve, Milli, FHero, Bodayslam, and many more. Have fun tasting a variety of food from the line of food trucks. Watch the beautiful light decorations and installation art around Sanam Luang. Enjoy open-air retro movies on a vertical screen, rare cultural performances, drone light shows, and so many more!  ​Do not miss the highlights: The over-20-metre-high dancing fountain show, as well as the EDM zone for dancing amidst unlimited water splashing.

Date: 11-15 April, 2024  Time: 13.00 – 22.00 Hrs.  Venues: Ratchadamnoen Klang Road, and Sanam Luang Field.

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